A Short Film Made From Red Dead Redemption

What's interesting about much of this John Hillcoat designed short, created to advertise Rockstar's latest Red Dead Redemption, is a nagging sense of passive observation. The viewer feels once removed. Is that because Hillcoat, by his own admission not too au fait with the video game medium, is struggling to engage with the material, or because the viewer is seeing sequences they would usually control presented as a brief feature? The virtual camera keeps Red Dead's lead John Marston at the kind of distance that would allow a player a fair approximation of his surroundings, and an ability to judge how best to play. In the context of a film though, the disconnect feels slightly disinterested, revolted even. There is a persistent lack of intimacy. Rather than implicate Marston as the lead, the construction stresses the viewer.

Is that an accurate reading or just a hang over from knowing where the material springs? Much has been assembled from in-game story sequences where this sort of visual language would go more or less unnoticed. You wouldn't detect how much of what you are seeing is being ordered for your schematic benefit, because you are the lead. John Marston is your toy. The stressed physical distance between audience and lead could equally be read as a tool to build a sense of mystery around John Marston. Like most revisionist Western heroes, Marston has a brutal past. This idea is supported by how the camera's behaviour changes when Marston begins to talk about his old life, it pushes right in on the back of his skull as if forcing its way into his thoughts. Another explanation could simply be that these avatars are not as engaging as real people, that the edit needs to diverge visually because watching a polygon figure shuffle through a environment doesn't grip like a prowling person. It's too artificial. If nothing else this short illustrates some of the key differences in visual grammar between the two mediums. Films can move throughout on visual signatures and motifs. Turns out games are all about geography.